gdbdump(1)

💾 gdbdump(1) — bestie edition 💾

okay so this is the manual page for gdbdump, and it lives in the HP100LX Tools manual. yes, that HP 100LX. the little palmtop that could. sit down, grab a snack, we're dumping databases today 🍓

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✨ NAME ✨

gdbdump — dump an HP 100LX database into ASCII format, no cap 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

gdbdump [-noqswm] file

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so basically, gdbdump exports everything inside an HP 100LX database and turns it into ASCII. file is the name of the 100LX database you want it to read — that's the one and only argument, bestie. the results get written to your terminal, and you can redirect them or pipe them wherever you want. the output format is literally designed to be fed into tons of database packages, and also into gdbload(1). iconic.

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🎀 Options 🎀

gdbdump recognizes these options, and yes we're going through all of them:

• -n — suppress that first line of the output, the one that normally holds the names of all the database fields. ⚠️ heads up though: if you use this, the output is not compatible with gdbload(1) anymore. but sometimes you need it for compatibility with other database programs that are trying to read the output, so. tradeoffs, we love them.
• -o — omit the note fields from the output. note fields are included by default, just so you know.
• -q — suppress warning messages. shhh. 🤫
• -s — write special characters (character codes 128-254, inclusive) directly to the output. the default behaviour is to represent those characters in \nnn notation instead.
• -w — wrap long lines. for some databases the output line length can get bigger than what some programs — notably vi(1) — can handle, especially when records contain long notes. this option wraps each output line at about 75 characters, and marks the end of lines that are to be continued with a backslash (\). gdbload(1) understands this format, so you're safe 🫶
• -m — write multi-line string (i.e. note) fields on multiple lines. so the quoted string will span newlines. without this option, newlines in strings get output as \r\n sequences, and the complete string will be subject to line wrapping if you specified the -w option.

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💜 Output Format Description 💜

the output of this program is an ASCII text file that starts with a line containing the field names (unless you specified -n, obviously) and then is followed by one line for each record of the database. note that any of these lines may be split into multiple lines if -w is specified, and that newlines in strings may cause further splitting if that's what -m says to do. each "logical" line contains all of the fields of the database, in the exact same order in which their field names appeared on the first line of the output. the fields are separated by commas. periodt.

exactly how each field shows up in the output depends on its type, so let's go through them:

• Text fields, category fields, and note fields appear with the contents inside quote marks ("). quote marks and backslashes within the text of the field are escaped by putting a backslash (\) in front of them. newlines are printed as \n and carriage returns as \r, unless the -m option is used. non-printing or non-ASCII characters come out as \nnn, where nnn is an octal character code. (peep the description of the -s flag above 👆)
• Number fields appear as they do in the database. Date fields appear in the format YYYYMMDD — for example, August 15, 1993 would appear as 19930815. Time fields appear in the format HHMM, where HH is in the range 00-23.
• Radio buttons and check boxes appear as 1 if selected, 0 otherwise.
• All other field types, including application-defined types, are omitted from the output. bye bestie 👋

this output format can be used as input to gdbload(1). it's giving round trip 💫

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😭 WARNINGS 😭

read these, fr fr, this is the important part:

gdbdump cannot handle the application-defined records and fields in HP 100LX Appointment Book and World Time databases. running this program on such databases will give you useful, but incomplete, output. so like, it's not nothing, but it's not everything either.

Records are printed in the order stored in the file, i.e., randomly. don't come for me, that's just how it is.

This program cannot handle password-protected databases. attempts to dump password-protected databases will have unpredictable results. unpredictable!! do not do this and then act surprised 😭

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

gdbdump was written by Steven Roth, stever@cup.hp.com, and it's being maintained by Arne Christensen, arc@pine.dk. contact the latter for bug reports, enhancement requests, or to get a copy of the source code. he's the main character of the maintenance arc 🫡

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🌈 DISCLAIMER 🌈

this program is released into the public domain and neither the author nor the maintainer place any restrictions on its use. we make no warranties or guarantees for this program and you use it at your own risk. this program is supplied by us personally and not by Hewlett-Packard Co. or Pine Tree Systems, which incur no obligations pertaining to it. so like, it's free, it's yours, it's also entirely your problem, slay 💅

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🧚 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 🧚

many thanks to Andy Gryc for publishing the details of the database file formats! without him we would simply not be here. a real one 🫶

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• gdbload(1) — the other half of the duo 💖

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okay that's the whole page, you're officially educated. this was HP100LX Tools, gdbdump(1), brought to you by Steve Roth et.al., dated February 1996. yes, 1996, and it still ate. bye bestie, go dump some databases responsibly ✨💾🎀